Cassian feels better being in the supposed bad part of town. It's far easier to blend, and he isn't afraid of being mugged or attacked. It might happen for sure, but he knows he's capable of fending it off.
Besides, apparently Jyn is a friendly face. He blinks at the little boy, the only sign he's confused, but the affection Jyn has for him is clear. She likes kids. Another note to add to his mental file.
He plays along. "He might have a little ways to go, just until he's taller than you," he says, because he decides going right for the height jugular is a Great Idea. It seems to amuse Soren at least who giggles gleefully. "But he certainly looks quite grown up so far."
Having grown up with Leia, Cassian is not too terrible with children like he might have been otherwise. He still feels a little awkward, mostly because his own childhood was such a hodgepodge of Rebellion versus Politics, but it's much easier to fake. He just pretends kids are Leia, and it makes it easier, even though she was quite opposite the regular little girl.
"It is anatomically impossible for a human child to grow over one foot in one night." There he is, K2 the killjoy. "This is clearly still an adolescent. Jyn Erso, do need glasses?"
Jyn breathes out a sigh through her nose, closing her eyes briefly before they snap open and her sweet smile returns to Soren. "Don't listen to him." Him being K2, of course, Cassian was perfectly fine.
"Are you coming to my birthday party, Jyn?" He bounces up and down in front of her, to the point that Jyn puts both her hands on his little shoulders so he doesn't bounce right into orbit.
"Of course I am. It's not every day a young man turns seven years old."
"Okay. Bye Jyn!" He jets off as quick as he came, darting back into the shop and leaving Jyn crouched there for a few seconds like she's startled by the sheer speed of him. In comparison, the way she straightens up is practically glacial. Once standing, she adjusts her fringe and sets off again, tucking her hands in her pockets this time.
K2 seems affronted, but Cassian turns to level his droid a Look and whisper at him to keep quiet. The warning only ever carries so far, but at least it works for now.
Jyn is very natural with kids, and it brings on a different side to her. The encounter speeds by so fast and Cassian feels so irrelevant to it that it takes him two seconds to recognize it's over. He waits for follow up that doesn't come, but he's not surprised. She has no reason to explain her life to him, but he suspects even if she did know him well, she wouldn't offer much else regardless.
"So when's the party?" is what he tries first, lightly, because he's determined to try another round of conversation. Maybe Soren put her in a better mood. It seems a better question to ask that anything directly about the boy in relation to Jyn.
Mechanic muttering filters from behind them. "I still don't know if she needs glasses."
"I don't need glasses." She doesn't... think. She hasn't gone to a doctor in quite some time now that she thinks about it. But that's not the point, the point is that the droid doesn't understand interacting with children and she's not going to touch that. She doesn't even know why she answered in the first place.
"His party is in a few days." She glances over at Cassian, jerking her head back to K2. "Is he always like this?"
As if Jyn is really being any better with her current attitude.
The party is a dead end topic, but talking about K2 doesn't seem like the best transition.
Cassian sighs. "No." A beat. "This is him being polite."
It takes a lot to reprogram a droid. Cassian did do it successfully, but the complete lack of tact is an unfixable error. Or maybe he's just too used to it to care, or maybe it's some weird semblance of K2's personality that he refuses to touch.
His best friend is a rude droid. Dealing with a rude!Jyn will probably be familiar.
"He's Imperial." In case Cassian hasn't noticed. She feels like it's worth noting -- especially since Cassian clearly isn't pro-Empire. Why does he have a rudely polite Imperial droid? "A KX security droid, isn't he? I thought they stopped making those because specialist models are more profitable than versatile ones."
It's not like she doesn't see them every time she visits her father at his office, lumbering through the halls and loitering by the hangar doors when Jyn accompanies Galen to Eadu, but it seems a curiosity to find one with Cassian.
Not to mention... She lowers her voice, stepping in closer to Cassian again, handing lifting to rest against his arm. "You might want to warn him that although his series isn't uncommon upstairs, people are still afraid of droids here. Not Soren, of course, he's too young, but." People Cassian's age, their parent's generation, people that actually remember the droid army in the Clone Wars.
"By original design." There's a but not anymore in there that he's not willing to elaborate on out in public, even if they're in a shitty part of the city. He's trusting her to read him very quickly.
"He has been with me for twelve years. I don't intend to take him everywhere -" K2 starts to protest, but Cassian raises his hand and the droid goes silent with what could be a mechanical huff. "But I was not about to leave him unattended before he was properly debriefed."
No way was he going to let his droid sit with Krennic before he got a handle on the situation for himself. Maybe in the future but it was too rushed and jittery before.
Cassian hesitates, letting her rest her hand and tucking his arm in like a proper sort of escort. "I know he is not often welcome. I lived through the Clone Wars. But K-2SO's loyalty is mine and mine alone. It has been invaluable in the past."
Her mouth twitches in the ghost of a smile as she takes his arm more completely before she packs it away, unwilling to give into mirth when she is still irritated her space is going to be invaded by this know-it-all.
"I was only a little girl. We were on Lokori when it ended. Papa says he thought we were going to die, but then the droids all stopped working at once." He had only told her as an explanation for why he was so over-protective with her when she was newly a teenager and more reckless than she probably should have been. "I don't remember any of it, I was a toddler."
It's why droids don't bother her, why she never looked askance at K2.
"It's just up here." She gestures to a hole in the wall cafe with little tables out front under an awning, the door open to let delicious smells wafts out into the street.
He doesn't quite remember what planet he was on. He feels like the fighting didn't stop for him even after the Clone Wars ended officially, hobbling around after his father between cells until being plucked up by Bail Organa and the fledgling Rebellion.
"I was in the Outer Rim." It's true and vague enough and should probably give tiny hints about his early formative years with the nature of the war out there. "I remember quite a bit, though it's all through the haze of childhood."
No more details will be forthcoming, and the only reason he offers that much is because conversation dictates him do so. When they reach the cafe, Cassian immediately looks it over. It's tiny and unassuming and there's a variety of smells. "Do you usually eat outside?"
"Not often." She leads them inside, glancing around before heading for a booth in the back where K2 will be able to have room to sit with his long ass legs. She's fairly certain he will be less of a sore thumb if he is sitting down in a dark corner.
Jyn herself slides into the side of the booth that puts her back to the door, leaving the other side for Cassian. She feels like he would appreciate that. Once seated, Jyn pushes the scarf back from her hair, unbuttoning her coat to set down besides her unless Cassian throws her for a massive curve ball and sits next to her.
She crosses her fingers that K2 won't sit next to her.
He'd much prefer to eat inside, so there are no complaints when she makes a beeline for a booth, especially one in the back. As much as he was loathe to leave K2 behind, he kind of wishes he had, just because having his droid slide into the booth will be a comical disaster, but having him stand up at the table is just asking for attention.
Fortunately his droid slides into the empty side first, his legs banging the table and shaking it and probably stepping on Jyn's foot at least once. It draws attention from a few customers, but nothing suspicious. Cassian sits far more gracefully after taking off his jacket. It'd probably be easier and more spacious to sit next to Jyn, but he's too paranoid to put his back to the door.
He squishes his jacket behind him. "Please tell me the caf isn't terrible?"
Her coat goes next to her, though the scarf stays looped around her neck as she lifts her shoulders in a shrug. "I don't know, I don't drink it."
Someone comes over to greet them and Jyn offers a brief smile to the man as he offers them menus that she just waves away. The smile is not nearly as bright as the one she had directed Soren, merely perfunctory.
Jyn orders a hot chocolate with tang bark for herself (and whipped bantha cream because she is a child) and a mug of caf for Cassian without asking. She also orders a plate of Corellian air cakes with spiced jelly, Mandalorian roba pie and fish dumpling soup, and a fruit plate for dessert, all to share. When the waiter looks at Cassian, Jyn waves him off with a brusque: "He's visiting."
Once the waiter goes back to get their food, she folds her hands in her lap and turns her attention to Cassian. "The fruit plate has starblossom. I thought you might like something from home."
He's only seen her smile twice but he can tell the difference between them. He doesn't necessarily like that she just orders everything, but he reminds himself not to interrupt because he needs to not antagonize her.
When she says it's from home, he idly thinks about Fest, and if this place has anything from there. But it's so far in the Outer Rim, not like Alderaan, that he doubts it. Not that he's about to complain. He loves Alderaanian cuisine.
"Thank you," he says, perfunctory and genuine even as he bites the urge to tell her he knows how to read a menu. "I assume this is the sort of place that mostly locals frequent."
He can order for himself next time and realize everything else is gross, greasy and fatty and heavy in a way that makes it stick to her insides, and that she did him a giant favor by choosing the best things on the menu. She won't hold it against him if he doesn't say thank you when that happens.
"Yeah. The college students who use the library wouldn't dare come down here." Her mouth slants into a bored expression, constantly done with the people she goes to school with. There is a reason she has a single friend, on the entirety of the planet, there is one person Jyn doesn't mind spending time with.
"The library has a cafeteria, most of them eat there."
Listen, just because he'd probably end up choosing the same things doesn't mean he'd not want the option. Control is his Thing.
Like everything else, he files away her distaste for her fellow students. He's probably already set himself apart from them by revealing he's not anywhere near fond of the Empire, but it won't be that simple.
"So if you're looking to avoid them, this is the place to be?"
The cafeteria is probably more like what he's used to on Yavin, but the further distance he can keep from Imperial cronies the better. He doesn't want his face plastered in their memories. Not while he's being some version of himself, at least.
She's already planning on eating lunch at home now, if Cassian is looking to frequent this place. It's kind of grating, the way she has to keep adjusting her life to fit this stranger, but it's not like she can ask her father to send him back. She's rude, but she's not mean. Her father did it for a reason, she just has to figure out what the reason is.
"It's cheaper here, too." With enough food for leftovers. She glances up when the waiter brings her cocoa and Cassian's caf, murmuring quiet thanks.
She looks annoyed, even if she's trying to hide it, and the one-word answer tells him she doesn't want him to invade her space here too. He resolves not to overdo it. He should probably find his own quiet places anyway.
The caf comes with sugars and creamers, but Cassian ignores them and just drinks it black. He nods his own thanks. "I assume most places down here aren't busy with academics," he says, but it's not a judging statement, more like a hint he wants to check out more of them. "What about groceries?"
She nods in agreement, swirling her spoon through the cocoa but not drinking it right away. Instead she curls her hands around the mug to warm her persistently cold fingers. "The closest is... near his office. Papa gets it delivered. Neither of us have the time."
Her nails drum against the mug. "I have class all day, then boxing or gymnastics or fencing or wrestling, then training at the Academy, and then I come home and actually do all of my school work." She hasn't created a stressful environment for herself at all. The only reason she was even free today was because it's not a school day and she did her running and Academy training in the morning.
Jyn is something of an overachiever, but it's both nurture (thanks, dad!) and nature (thanks, mom!). She can't just sit around and do nothing.
He knows where Galen's office is. He already knows where most of the important buildings are, but it's better to play dumb. But then Jyn keeps talking about how she spends her days and dang she's busy. It might make it harder to spend time with her, so he resolves to figuring out her exact schedule.
"Do you sleep at all?" Which is hilarious coming from Cassian Andor who doesn't know how to function without a job or task at hand. At least he asks it more teasingly than anything else. "Or is that reserved for weekends?"
"It was reserved for today." She manages to bite back her smile at his teasing but only just barely. "I have two afternoons off a week, a few hours between class and gymnastics. Wrestling ends next week." Which will give her slightly more free time, only because she hasn't found something to shove into that empty space now since she gave up shockball the year prior when Galen found it too difficult to watch his daughter play such a violent sport.
She'd be a lot less stressed if she could stun a bunch of assholes in the name of athletics.
Aha! There is amusement there, however tiny, and he takes it as a victory. "Please forgive me for taking up some of your sleeping hours." It's strange how easy the teasing filters out, even if some of it doesn't feel wholly like him. "But I know the feeling," he adds on, because sitting still is definitely absolutely The Worst. "I like to keep busy. I do get to make a lot of my own hours in this field, but they're long ones."
"Human beings require approximately seven to nine hours of sleep for it to be healthy." K2 is addressing Jyn's busy schedule, but it definitely sounds like he's talking to Cassian too.
"K2, you know academia doesn't lend itself to a proper sleeping schedule." It's a reminder of the mission as well as an easy reply.
"You won't want to focus on my father's sleeping habits in that case." It's fine, neither Erso is particularly healthy, Jyn still has nightmares, sleep is for the weak. Jyn sleeps for shit, but Galen is worse because he's a morning person, unlike his daughter.
Jyn pushes her bangs back before she leans over to blow on her hot cocoa, finally taking a sip. Predictably, blue whipped cream lingers on her nose.
He hadn't really thought about sharing a room until faced with it, and it's usually not a big deal, but now he's thinking about his own sleeping habits and hoping that he can at least keep waking up from nightmares quietly.
"So what you're saying is none of us make healthy sleeping choices," he says lightly, because clearly making fun of all three of them for academic reasons is the best way forward.
He takes a sip of his caf and double takes at the sight of the whipped cream on her nose. It's adorable, more than it has any right to be, and he's kind of curious how long it might take her to notice. "You don't feel that?"
Jyn's eyebrows knit together and she takes another sip of her cocoa, shaking her head in confusion.
"Feel... what?"
So no, that's a no. And thanks to the brain's defense to effectively erase the nose to not stare at the nose all day she does not realize there is whipped cream on her nose.
He should just tell her, because that would be the simple, logical thing to do. She's got her own napkin and everything.
Instead he just gives her a half sheepish smile, then reaches across the table and wipes the whip cream off her nose, showing her the blue now on his finger. "Cute, but not terrible practical, unless it was a snack for later. In which case, I'm sorry."
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ohnofeelstho2017-06-03 11:16 pm
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Besides, apparently Jyn is a friendly face. He blinks at the little boy, the only sign he's confused, but the affection Jyn has for him is clear. She likes kids. Another note to add to his mental file.
He plays along. "He might have a little ways to go, just until he's taller than you," he says, because he decides going right for the height jugular is a Great Idea. It seems to amuse Soren at least who giggles gleefully. "But he certainly looks quite grown up so far."
Having grown up with Leia, Cassian is not too terrible with children like he might have been otherwise. He still feels a little awkward, mostly because his own childhood was such a hodgepodge of Rebellion versus Politics, but it's much easier to fake. He just pretends kids are Leia, and it makes it easier, even though she was quite opposite the regular little girl.
"It is anatomically impossible for a human child to grow over one foot in one night." There he is, K2 the killjoy. "This is clearly still an adolescent. Jyn Erso, do need glasses?"
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"Are you coming to my birthday party, Jyn?" He bounces up and down in front of her, to the point that Jyn puts both her hands on his little shoulders so he doesn't bounce right into orbit.
"Of course I am. It's not every day a young man turns seven years old."
"Okay. Bye Jyn!" He jets off as quick as he came, darting back into the shop and leaving Jyn crouched there for a few seconds like she's startled by the sheer speed of him. In comparison, the way she straightens up is practically glacial. Once standing, she adjusts her fringe and sets off again, tucking her hands in her pockets this time.
She offers zero explanation for anything.
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Jyn is very natural with kids, and it brings on a different side to her. The encounter speeds by so fast and Cassian feels so irrelevant to it that it takes him two seconds to recognize it's over. He waits for follow up that doesn't come, but he's not surprised. She has no reason to explain her life to him, but he suspects even if she did know him well, she wouldn't offer much else regardless.
"So when's the party?" is what he tries first, lightly, because he's determined to try another round of conversation. Maybe Soren put her in a better mood. It seems a better question to ask that anything directly about the boy in relation to Jyn.
Mechanic muttering filters from behind them. "I still don't know if she needs glasses."
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"His party is in a few days." She glances over at Cassian, jerking her head back to K2. "Is he always like this?"
As if Jyn is really being any better with her current attitude.
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Cassian sighs. "No." A beat. "This is him being polite."
It takes a lot to reprogram a droid. Cassian did do it successfully, but the complete lack of tact is an unfixable error. Or maybe he's just too used to it to care, or maybe it's some weird semblance of K2's personality that he refuses to touch.
His best friend is a rude droid. Dealing with a rude!Jyn will probably be familiar.
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It's not like she doesn't see them every time she visits her father at his office, lumbering through the halls and loitering by the hangar doors when Jyn accompanies Galen to Eadu, but it seems a curiosity to find one with Cassian.
Not to mention... She lowers her voice, stepping in closer to Cassian again, handing lifting to rest against his arm. "You might want to warn him that although his series isn't uncommon upstairs, people are still afraid of droids here. Not Soren, of course, he's too young, but." People Cassian's age, their parent's generation, people that actually remember the droid army in the Clone Wars.
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"He has been with me for twelve years. I don't intend to take him everywhere -" K2 starts to protest, but Cassian raises his hand and the droid goes silent with what could be a mechanical huff. "But I was not about to leave him unattended before he was properly debriefed."
No way was he going to let his droid sit with Krennic before he got a handle on the situation for himself. Maybe in the future but it was too rushed and jittery before.
Cassian hesitates, letting her rest her hand and tucking his arm in like a proper sort of escort. "I know he is not often welcome. I lived through the Clone Wars. But K-2SO's loyalty is mine and mine alone. It has been invaluable in the past."
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"I was only a little girl. We were on Lokori when it ended. Papa says he thought we were going to die, but then the droids all stopped working at once." He had only told her as an explanation for why he was so over-protective with her when she was newly a teenager and more reckless than she probably should have been. "I don't remember any of it, I was a toddler."
It's why droids don't bother her, why she never looked askance at K2.
"It's just up here." She gestures to a hole in the wall cafe with little tables out front under an awning, the door open to let delicious smells wafts out into the street.
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"I was in the Outer Rim." It's true and vague enough and should probably give tiny hints about his early formative years with the nature of the war out there. "I remember quite a bit, though it's all through the haze of childhood."
No more details will be forthcoming, and the only reason he offers that much is because conversation dictates him do so. When they reach the cafe, Cassian immediately looks it over. It's tiny and unassuming and there's a variety of smells. "Do you usually eat outside?"
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Jyn herself slides into the side of the booth that puts her back to the door, leaving the other side for Cassian. She feels like he would appreciate that. Once seated, Jyn pushes the scarf back from her hair, unbuttoning her coat to set down besides her unless Cassian throws her for a massive curve ball and sits next to her.
She crosses her fingers that K2 won't sit next to her.
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Fortunately his droid slides into the empty side first, his legs banging the table and shaking it and probably stepping on Jyn's foot at least once. It draws attention from a few customers, but nothing suspicious. Cassian sits far more gracefully after taking off his jacket. It'd probably be easier and more spacious to sit next to Jyn, but he's too paranoid to put his back to the door.
He squishes his jacket behind him. "Please tell me the caf isn't terrible?"
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Someone comes over to greet them and Jyn offers a brief smile to the man as he offers them menus that she just waves away. The smile is not nearly as bright as the one she had directed Soren, merely perfunctory.
Jyn orders a hot chocolate with tang bark for herself (and whipped bantha cream because she is a child) and a mug of caf for Cassian without asking. She also orders a plate of Corellian air cakes with spiced jelly, Mandalorian roba pie and fish dumpling soup, and a fruit plate for dessert, all to share. When the waiter looks at Cassian, Jyn waves him off with a brusque: "He's visiting."
Once the waiter goes back to get their food, she folds her hands in her lap and turns her attention to Cassian. "The fruit plate has starblossom. I thought you might like something from home."
Well, from Alderaan.
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When she says it's from home, he idly thinks about Fest, and if this place has anything from there. But it's so far in the Outer Rim, not like Alderaan, that he doubts it. Not that he's about to complain. He loves Alderaanian cuisine.
"Thank you," he says, perfunctory and genuine even as he bites the urge to tell her he knows how to read a menu. "I assume this is the sort of place that mostly locals frequent."
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"Yeah. The college students who use the library wouldn't dare come down here." Her mouth slants into a bored expression, constantly done with the people she goes to school with. There is a reason she has a single friend, on the entirety of the planet, there is one person Jyn doesn't mind spending time with.
"The library has a cafeteria, most of them eat there."
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Like everything else, he files away her distaste for her fellow students. He's probably already set himself apart from them by revealing he's not anywhere near fond of the Empire, but it won't be that simple.
"So if you're looking to avoid them, this is the place to be?"
The cafeteria is probably more like what he's used to on Yavin, but the further distance he can keep from Imperial cronies the better. He doesn't want his face plastered in their memories. Not while he's being some version of himself, at least.
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She's already planning on eating lunch at home now, if Cassian is looking to frequent this place. It's kind of grating, the way she has to keep adjusting her life to fit this stranger, but it's not like she can ask her father to send him back. She's rude, but she's not mean. Her father did it for a reason, she just has to figure out what the reason is.
"It's cheaper here, too." With enough food for leftovers. She glances up when the waiter brings her cocoa and Cassian's caf, murmuring quiet thanks.
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The caf comes with sugars and creamers, but Cassian ignores them and just drinks it black. He nods his own thanks. "I assume most places down here aren't busy with academics," he says, but it's not a judging statement, more like a hint he wants to check out more of them. "What about groceries?"
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Her nails drum against the mug. "I have class all day, then boxing or gymnastics or fencing or wrestling, then training at the Academy, and then I come home and actually do all of my school work." She hasn't created a stressful environment for herself at all. The only reason she was even free today was because it's not a school day and she did her running and Academy training in the morning.
Jyn is something of an overachiever, but it's both nurture (thanks, dad!) and nature (thanks, mom!). She can't just sit around and do nothing.
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"Do you sleep at all?" Which is hilarious coming from Cassian Andor who doesn't know how to function without a job or task at hand. At least he asks it more teasingly than anything else. "Or is that reserved for weekends?"
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She'd be a lot less stressed if she could stun a bunch of assholes in the name of athletics.
"I don't like sitting still."
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"Human beings require approximately seven to nine hours of sleep for it to be healthy." K2 is addressing Jyn's busy schedule, but it definitely sounds like he's talking to Cassian too.
"K2, you know academia doesn't lend itself to a proper sleeping schedule." It's a reminder of the mission as well as an easy reply.
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Jyn pushes her bangs back before she leans over to blow on her hot cocoa, finally taking a sip. Predictably, blue whipped cream lingers on her nose.
She's cute as fuck.
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"So what you're saying is none of us make healthy sleeping choices," he says lightly, because clearly making fun of all three of them for academic reasons is the best way forward.
He takes a sip of his caf and double takes at the sight of the whipped cream on her nose. It's adorable, more than it has any right to be, and he's kind of curious how long it might take her to notice. "You don't feel that?"
But bringing it up is better.
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"Feel... what?"
So no, that's a no. And thanks to the brain's defense to effectively erase the nose to not stare at the nose all day she does not realize there is whipped cream on her nose.
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Instead he just gives her a half sheepish smile, then reaches across the table and wipes the whip cream off her nose, showing her the blue now on his finger. "Cute, but not terrible practical, unless it was a snack for later. In which case, I'm sorry."
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